Obi Home Mesh Network, No Parental controls. Not Recommended

Orbi is promoted as a family home mesh network. I was amazed to find that they have no parental controls in this router, although their phone app images on the site do show parental controls. Parental controls are always needed, but In a COVID world with kinds home and on devices more than ever, parental controls is required. This has been a standard feature in all their routers, usually partnering with other companies (like Disney's Circle) and giving at least free basic controls. I called Netgear and they say they have nothing for the device at this time, but are developing a parental control called Smart Parental Control that may come out to their wifi 6 routers within a few month.

I am a huge Netgear fan, but releasing a premium family home router without parental control, is unforgivable. When pressed for an alternative solution, the technician recommended Opendns, which is a free web filtering DNS server. This is a fine option for some things, but it filters every computer on your network with no individual device control. So, if you want your child's device to not get YouTube or Netflix, the entire household is blocked from those sites. Not exactly a great solution. Parental control at the router level can see all the network attached devices and good parental controls allow you to make rules for specific devices.

Overall the router and satellites do setup well, wifi 6 coverage is great throughout the house, and speeds are great! However, I have had some issues with the android app working correctly and have had to reset the router a few times, which is a time consuming drag.

Overall, I recommend seeking a wifi 6 mesh router that has better software development and more generous router functionality. I am researching currently and will report back when I find a better solution.